He’s lying on something wet, and the cold is rapidly seeping through the back of his coat. He feels the brittle curl of dead leaves scratch against his palm when he tentatively shifts an arm.
Ever so slowly the world brightens as his eyes adjust, and then there are stars directly above him, a sky full of them, flickering in and out as they are caught between the rustle and sway of tree branches.
With considerable effort he pushes himself to his feet. It’s strange - for the first time the flesh of his vessel feels heavy, too large for him rather than too small. Every sensation is sharper, more immediate, almost painfully so. His calves ache. His fingers are numb and stiff from the cold. Immediately after he manages to stand the world lurches forward and he stumbles to a nearby tree, clutches at it to stay upright.
There’s a disquieting emptiness in his body, now. He’s been powerless before, yes, but he’s never occupied his vessel entirely without the boundaries of grace, the constant white-hot pulsing and pushing outwards of the divine.Gone, too, is the buzzing of angel radio that always used to fill the back of his skull, and he thinks the silence may be enough to drive him mad.
He imagines this is what it’s like to be torn apart and reassembled smaller. Jammed together like misaligned jigsaw pieces.
He doesn’t know where he is, but he figures that can wait, at least until he can stand on his own. He inhales slowly, exhales, counts the passing seconds: one, two, three, four, then pushes himself from the tree. One foot carefully forward, then the other, and then he is slowly stumbling through the woods in whatever direction has the fewest brambles, because it’s dark even with the moonlight and as far as he can see it’s trees on all sides and where’s he supposed to go, anyway?
All he knows is that he needs to move, so he does.
The trees give way to a clearing a few minutes in, and it’s then that he sees them: bright, flaming streaks hurtling down towards the earth. As if triggered by the sight, angel radio flickers back to life, and suddenly he can hear his brothers and sisters again.
There’s screaming. There’s so much screaming.
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
titsay
ellievsbear
